Killzone 2 multiplayer, like an M1 Garand, hits and misses

The Killzone 2 multiplayer beta is underway and we've got a report from the …

Though the shelves are lined with shooters for the PlayStation 3, Sony and Guerrilla Games are hoping you have room for one more: the multiplayer beta of Killzone 2 is well under way. Killzone 2 is finally nearing release, and we've sunk some hours into the beta to get a feel for how Sony's shooter will stand out in a sea of similar titles.

First and foremost, let's get this out of the way: the game is drop-dead, disgustingly gorgeous. The animations are silky smooth, the gun models are spectacular, the environments are rendered with high-resolution textures covered in minute details, and the frantic action plays out without without a hitch in the framerate. Aside from the gratuitous use of motion blur, this is about as good as a console shooter is going to look for a long way. Visuals will only get you so far however, and at this stage of the beta, Killzone 2 tends to be quite hit or miss when it comes to the actual gameplay.

It's clear that the game is inspired by the likes of Call of Duty 4. The frantic feel of Infinity Ward's opus is recreated well in Killzone 2: the action is very fast and loose, and it's easy to get overwhelmed by the action.Guerrilla's title ups the ante over Call of Duty 4 by sticking to more intricate areas and throwing environmental damage into the mix. Debris scatters everywhere in a heated gunfight, and there are few quiet moments in the hectic action. Expect to be disoriented, confused, and scared in your first big game.

The beta includes three maps and a single game mode, "Warzone," the online mode we first heard about back at E3. Essentially, you have one giant, open map and a defined array of objective-based game modes that run one after the other. The team that wins the most of the individual games wins the overall round. These mini-modes include the staple classics with a Killzone spin: "Body Count" is your basic deathmatch; "Assassination" involves killing a tagged player; "Search and Destroy;" "Search and Retrieve;" and "Capture and Hold." Taken separately, these modes are the standard fare, but stringing them together in Warzone creates a dynamic feel that keeps the action as objectives are quasi-randomly placed on the map.

To manage these ever-changing objectives with 31 other players is the game's on-the-fly squad system. At any time, up to four players can group up into a squad and share a private voice chat channel to get things done. The most important part of this system is that the squad leader becomes a respawn point: respawning without a squad usually puts you out of the action with quite a bit of a walk back to the current objective. Squads are invaluable to winning a match, especially with an experienced squad leader who knows to play conservative to stay alive.

Unfortunately, the squad system isn't the quite the flawless and fluid system it was sold as: the admittedly more flexible system in Killzone 2 doesn't organize the action as well as the static and regimented squad system of Resistance 2. Creating squads on the fly is very clunky: you have to pause, press the select button, and manage the menus from there. Furthermore, not every player in the game is in a squad: squads are never automatically assigned as in Resistance 2, so the action tends to be incredibly chaotic—and at times frustratingly unmanageable—in games bigger than 16 players.

This becomes a problem because of the nature of the game: tactics and using the different character classes together is incredibly important. In spite of the sci-fi setting, damage is more or less realistic; don't expect to take more than a burst or two before you're crying out for a medic. The inherently frantic action is made maddening by the lack of organization, and at times the game feels like what can only be described as one gigantic clusterfu... well, you know. Without communication, it's not rare for a single well-placed turret to mow down an entire team.

This is also troublesome because so much of the personal character progression is bound up in winning matches—the winning team gets a multiplier applied to experience which is crucial to leveling up and unlocking better weapons and, more importantly, the actual character classes. Unlike most class-based shooters, you'll actually start Killzone 2 with access to none of the classes which make or break team strategy. To unlock even your first class badge, you'll have to play through and do well in a great number of games. It's as though the first few hours of multiplayer will be a tutorial before you're free to mix and match. Unfortunately, the default weapons and lack of abilities in the starting "newbie" class are anemic. Expect to be run over by better players for quite some time. For a "tutorial" of sorts, this doesn't seem like a good design decision and for anyone less than the hardcore shooter fan, this could be enough of an off-put to ruin the entire experience. There's no escaping the fact that you start the game completely handicapped.

Killzone 2 is still very much in beta; the game is currently expected to land in February 2009 exclusively for the PS3, so there's plenty of time to tweak. How exactly the game's multiplayer will turn out is hard to say: the core action is a fun, frantic ride, but some of the interface problems (there's no party system, but only a simple "follow friend" function like Warhawk) and design decisions surrounding the squad and badge systems need work.